Issue with a huge scene - strange behaviour with GI

[wilbertvandenbroek]

I generally tend to use textures in 3K resolution. Usually this gives nice results, without the scene getting too heavy. Sure, using 1K textures would be easier on the RAM, but for closeups afterwards I'll have to rework all the textures... @wilbertvandenbroek what resolution do you go for?

Everything that is far away will get 1k resolution, close to the camera max 4k. And really look at small stuff, like some screw or bolt or whatever doesn't need 1k but much smaller. Also I try to reduce the image size to a minimum by compressing to the max, Tinypng or just jpg compression. As long as it doesn't make a difference.

[romullus]

Also I try to reduce the image size to a minimum by compressing to the max, Tinypng or just jpg compression. As long as it doesn't make a difference.

This won't help. Corona stores uncompressed textures in RAM. It doesn't matter if you'll save your texture on disk as 100 KB PNG, or 50MB BMP file, they will take equal amount of RAM in rendering if everything else is the same.

Here's what will save the RAM in terms of textures - lowering resolution, making sure that your textures has optimal bit depth, getting rid of excess channels.

[wilbertvandenbroek]

I didn't know that. How does that work? When I work with lossy file formats like jpg there is no uncompressed version right?

[romullus]

No matter in what format an image is saved on disk (compressed, or not, lossless, or lossy), Corona always allocates the same amount of bits per pixel times bit depth times number of channels. The math is easy - 2K texture will need 4 times less RAM than 4K, greyscale image will take 3 times less RAM than RGB and 4 times less than RGBA, 8 bit texture will occupy half amount of RAM compared to 16 bit. Format is only important if you want to save disk space.

[wilbertvandenbroek]

Ok, another thing learned today. Thanks for clearing that up.